Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

Since we said we had waited in the area for a full hour after Trader went down, they didn’t even bother to send ships to look for the missing man. A couple of helicopters scanned the general area for a couple of days in the hope of spotting the floating body, but it was never spotted, and Arden Trader was finally listed as missing at sea, presumed dead.

Since Peggy’s secret marriage wasn’t revealed to the press until the drowning of the groom was simultaneously announced, both got wide news coverage. But again there wasn’t the slightest intimation that it could have been anything but a tragic accident.

Peggy owned a half-dozen villas in various parts of the world, and one of them was at San Juan. When the police at Nassau released us, we continued on to Puerto Rico, where the grieving widow went into seclusion. News reports said that the only people accompanying her to the villa were a female companion and her personal secretary, neither of whose names were reported.

The “female companion” was a middle-aged housekeeper who spoke nothing but Spanish. I, of course, was the personal secretary.

The villa had its own private beach, and we spent an idyllic two months on a sort of premarital honeymoon. Long before it was over, there was no question in my mind about being in love. The physical attraction was just as strong, but that wasn’t Peggy’s only attraction anymore. I was as ludicrously in love as the hero of some mid-Victorian love novel.

At the end of two months, Peggy thought it safe to emerge back into the world and for us to be quietly married. She had been in correspondence with one of her several lawyers meantime, and the day before the ceremony was to be performed, she presented me with a legal document to sign, a waiver of all rights to her estate except what she voluntarily left me in her will.

“You think I might murder you for your money?” I growled after examining it.

“It’s my lawyer’s idea,” she said apologetically. “While I’m not legally bound to follow my father’s re-quest, it was his expressed wish in his will that if I had no heirs, I leave most of my estate to set up a research foundation. If we have children, naturally the bulk of the estate will go to them, and of course I’ll see that you’re well taken care of. But just suppose I died the day after we married? I have no other living relatives, so you would inherit everything. Would it be fair for my father’s dream of a Matthews Foundation to go down the drain?”

“I’m not marrying you for your money,” I told her.

“If you died the day after we married, I’d probably kill myself, too. But it’s not worth arguing about.” I signed the document.

The ceremony was performed before a civil judge in San Juan, with our housekeeper and the court clerk as witnesses. Peggy wanted only a plain gold band, and it cost me only twenty-five dollars. The diamond she wore, I discovered, had not been given her by Arden Trader but had been her mother’s engagement ring. She said she preferred to continue to wear it instead of having me pick out another.

As in the case of her previous marriage, Peggy didn’t want the news released to the press until we had completed a honeymoon cruise so we wouldn’t be besieged by reporters at every port of call. I pointed out that she was too well known to escape all publicity, and unless she wanted to pretend deep gloom at each stop, people were bound to guess we were on a honeymoon. She said she didn’t plan to withhold the news from friends and acquaintances but was going to request them not to relay it to any reporters, so there was a good chance we could keep the secret from the general public until we completed the cruise.

“It won’t be a tragedy if reporters find out,” she said. “I just want a chance for us to be alone as long as possible.”

For our cruise we decided to complete the circuit of the Caribbean we had already started. This time there would be only two of us aboard, however.

We got as far as the island of Great Inagua when we ran over a floating log in the harbor, broke a propeller shaft, and lost the prop. The spare parts weren’t available anywhere on the island, but I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble finding them back at our previous stop, Port-de-Paix.

A packet ship plied every other day from Great Inagua to Haiti, then on to the Dominican Republic and finally to Puerto Rico. I checked the schedule and discovered that if I caught the one on Friday, I could catch the return ship from Port-de-Paix to Great Inagua on Saturday.

Peggy knew some people named Jordan on the small island where we were laid up, and as they were having a house party on Friday night, she decided not to accompany me.

I got back with the new propeller shaft and propeller about four o’clock Saturday afternoon. The private boat slips were only about fifty yards from the main dock, and I could see the Princess II as we pulled in. A slim feminine figure in a red bikini was on the bow waving to the ship. I doubted that she could make me out at that distance from among the other passengers lining the rail, but I waved back, anyway.

When I lugged my packages aboard the Princess II, Peggy was no longer on the bow. She was leaning back into the canvas back rest on one of the air-inflated mats on the afterdeck. A tanned and muscular young man of about twenty-five, wearing white swim trunks, was seated on the stern rail.

As I set down my packages, Peggy said, “Honey, this is Bob Colvin, one of Max and Susie Jordan’s house guests. My husband Dan, Bob.”

The young man rose, and we shook hands. He inquired how I was, and I said I was glad to meet him.

“Bob was planning to take the Monday packet ship up to Governor’s Harbor, then fly from there to Miami,” Peggy said. “I told him if he wasn’t in a hurry, he might as well leave with us tomorrow and sail all the way home. He can sleep in the pilothouse.”

Counting our two months in seclusion at San Juan, our honeymoon had now lasted long enough so that the urgency to be completely alone had abated somewhat for both of us. I don’t mean that my love for Peggy had abated. It was just that both of us were ready to emerge from our pink cloud back into the world of people. My only reaction was that it would be nice to have someone to spell me at the wheel from time to time.

“Sure,” I said, and knelt beside my wife to give her a kiss.

She kissed me soundly, then forced me to a seated position next to her and pressed my head onto her shoulder. Smiling down into my face, she began to stroke my hair.

With my face in its upturned position, I could look right over her shoulder into the shaving mirror attached to the timber alongside the hatch leading below. By pure accident it was slanted slightly downward to reflect the deck area immediately in front of the inflated mat.

In the mirror I could see Bob Colvin’s raised bare foot. Peggy’s bare toes were working lasciviously against his and along the sole of his foot.

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , November 1966.

Modern society has become so automated, it’s amazing how many of the things one does are later scrutinized by an electronic computer. For example, for some time now our state headquarters of the National Association of Underwriters has been routinely feeding punch cards into a computer for every insurance policy issued, and for every claim filed in the state. The data which comes out is mainly useful for statistical purposes, but once in a while something will spill out which suggests a possible insurance fraud. When that happens, the information is relayed to the association’s investigative division, which is where I work.

One Monday morning in mid-October I came to work in a bad mood. Anita and I had gone round and round again the night before about getting married. As usual, the argument had centered about the lack of future in working for a salary and ended with the ultimatum that she would never marry a man who couldn’t support her in luxury.